The First National Map of the Sound Patterns of American English
Bill Labov of UPenn
at the CLSP/JHU Summer Research Workshop on August 13, 1997
at 10:30 am, Arellano Theater, Levering Hall.
The First National Map of the Sound Patterns of American English
Over the past two decades, sociolinguistic research has identified
the major sound changes that are actively differentiating the dialects of
American English. Since 1995, the Telsur Project at the University of
Pennsylvania has been sampling speakers in the urban areas with the goal of
producing a Phonological Atlas of North America. The sound changes
affecting American English are primarily changes in the stressed vowel
system of two basic kinds: mergers and chain shifts. While the progress of
mergers can been tracked through the impressionistic analysis of responses
of 607 speakers, the systematic tracking of chain shifts requires the
complete acoustic analysis of each individual vowel system. This has now
been completed for a subsample of 238 speakers, and the results used to
prepare the first national map of the sound patterns of American English.
This map shows three homogeneous regions corresponding to the three active
patterns of sound change: the Northern Cities Shift dominating the Inland
North, the Southern Shift throughout the Southern States, and the Western
Reorientation in the western third of the U.S. Although traditional
dialectologists have concluded that regional boundaries are gradual and
diffuse, the boundaries of these regions are sharply defined by the
coincidence of numerous sound patterns, a coincidence that is motivated
both linguistically and historically.
The new national map shows that the Inland North is a discrete and
relatively uniform area of advanced sound change closely linked with the
conservative North Central region, both defined by the retention of the
tense nuclei in the long high and mid vowels. In the opposing development
of the Southern Shift, the decline of r-lessness has reduced the difference
between the Appalachian region and the coastal South. The intervening
Midland region includes areas that have departed minimally from the
"initial position" of the vowels of American English, along with many large
cities that are shifting in diverse directions with local features that
differentiate them from their hinterlands. Although the West has been
considered an area of a diffuse and varied character, there is evidence of
a new homogeneous pattern that differentiates it as a unique region from
the North, the Midland and the South.
The presentation will project the geographic and linguistic
evidence for the location of these regional boundaries, and discuss the
cognitive, social and linguistic implications of this geographic
differentiation.